Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

South Korean farmers are suffering in record heat, as Hong Kong reports its highest ever temperature and Japan swelters through newly designated ‘cruelly hot’ days

In a potato field in Yanggu county, 80 miles (130km) north-east of Seoul, Lee Sang-hyuk dug into the soil and found nothing worth saving.

A week earlier the crop, located in Gangwon province, had looked fine. Now the potatoes came up soft and collapsing, “like boiled potatoes”, spoiled by heat that had turned the ground into something closer to an oven.

Continue reading...

After 25 years away, can Coventry make their return to the top division stick under Frank Lampard?

Guardian writers’ predicted position: 18th (NB: this is not necessarily Ben Fisher’s prediction but the average of our writers’ tips)

Last season’s position: 1st (Championship)

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• Centre-back closes on move to La Liga side

• Hull break their transfer record to sign Nobel Mendy

Tottenham have reached an agreement with Atlético Madrid over the sale of captain Cristian Romero.

Romero was given the green light by the club and Roberto De Zerbi to depart Spurs this summer after a turbulent 2025-26 campaign where he served four separate suspensions.

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After person is spotted disposing of suspicious device, police with K-9 unit halt major roadway for two hours

A stretch of a major Washington DC roadway was brought to a standstill during Wednesday morning’s rush hour after the city’s bomb squad responded to a suspicious device – only for police to later identify the object as a sex toy.

The situation unfolded at about 7am as many commuters were on their way to work. Authorities initially told WUSA9 that a witness had reported seeing someone place a suspicious package inside a trash can near the Tenleytown fire station.

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“The wind is my nemesis!” says Jennifer Latour, and rightly so. In her sculptural assemblages, single flowers or small clusters of blooms sprout from tree branches or thick stems, appearing like otherworldly forms standing in the landscape. A soft breeze could topple the Vancouver-based artist’s ephemeral works, scattering their delicate petals and spindly shoots before she has the chance to snap a photo.

These fleeting moments are preserved in Latour’s Bound Species series, which she began during lockdown by piecing together objects found around her home into unconventional, ikebana-style compositions. “During this time, I started having a recurring dream of giant flowers growing around me with multiple species of other flowers growing off one stem. I draw a lot of inspiration from my dreams, and this was something I had to test out in real life,” she tells us.

After a few trials, the process clicked. She ideated on the ways different colors and shapes might puzzle together into a sort of hybrid character and envisioned photographing on location, presenting the unorthodox arrangements in stunning, natural settings. When travel became possible, she jumped at the opportunity to bring the sculptures outdoors. That’s when she encountered the wind. “I quickly discovered how much more difficult this was,” she says. “It takes so much more patience and time to make my sculptures out in the wild but all that much more satisfying when it works out!”

Today, Latour continues to venture outdoors and often sources materials from local garden centers, flower shops, and even the occasional grocery store, should the botanicals be locally grown. She assembles each piece by hand, connecting stem to stem in a way that evokes “the interconnectedness found in nature, and serves as a reminder that all creatures are bound simultaneously by both their similarities and their differences.”

With trips planned to Arizona and the U.K. seaside in the coming months, the artist will continue to transform colorful specimens into strange, mishmashed forms. “I dream of taking the work all around the world to the most remote and unique locations,” she adds. “It’s a practice I see myself continuing to create and evolve until either my hands or my body stop working.”

Latour’s images are currently on view in two group exhibitions—Where the Seasons Endure at Gallery COA in Montreal and The House and the Forest at Can Balaguer in Palma, Mallorca—and she’s also planning for a solo show in 2027. Keep up with her travels and projects on Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Jennifer Latour Preserves Ephemeral Beauty in Her Otherworldly Botanical Assemblages appeared first on Colossal.

Weer voor Rotterdam 🌕 - 13-08-2026 01:15 CEST

In één oogopslag:
• 22.8°C · Helder 🌕 | Min 14.6°C / Max 29.2°C

Verwachting voor vandaag:
• Min 14.6°C, Max 29.2°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1022.0 hPa ↘️ -1.9 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 16.9 km/u (4.7 m/s), richting: ← 80°

Uurlijkse voorspelling voor de komende 12 uur:

• 02:00: 21.9°C (Helder) 🌕, 🧭 1023.9 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 14.4 km/u (4.0 m/s), richting: ← 90°
• 03:00: 21.1°C (Helder) 🌕, 🧭 1023.5 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 14.0 km/u (3.9 m/s), richting: ← 99°
• 04:00: 20.2°C (Helder) 🌕, 🧭 1023.3 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 12.2 km/u (3.4 m/s), richting: ← 96°
• 05:00: 19.3°C (Helder) 🌕, 🧭 1023.2 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 10.8 km/u (3.0 m/s), richting: ← 94°
• 06:00: 18.8°C (Helder) 🌕, 🧭 1023.1 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 10.4 km/u (2.9 m/s), richting: ← 97°
• 07:00: 18.7°C (Zonnig) ☀️, 🧭 1023.1 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 10.1 km/u (2.8 m/s), richting: ← 108°
• 08:00: 20.3°C (Zonnig) ☀️, 🧭 1023.2 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 8.6 km/u (2.4 m/s), richting: ↖ 120°
• 09:00: 22.7°C (Zonnig) ☀️, 🧭 1023.3 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 8.3 km/u (2.3 m/s), richting: ↖ 120°
• 10:00: 25.5°C (Zonnig) ☀️, 🧭 1023.4 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 7.2 km/u (2.0 m/s), richting: ← 112°
• 11:00: 28.1°C (Zonnig) ☀️, 🧭 1023.3 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 6.8 km/u (1.9 m/s), richting: ← 108°
• 12:00: 30.1°C (Zonnig) ☀️, 🧭 1023.0 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 7.9 km/u (2.2 m/s), richting: ← 88°
• 13:00: 31.4°C (Zonnig) ☀️, 🧭 1022.6 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 10.1 km/u (2.8 m/s), richting: ← 82°

Voorspelling voor de komende dagen:

• vrijdag 14 augustus: Min 18.7°C, Max 34.1°C (Gedeeltelijk bewolkt) ⛅, 🧭 1016.6 hPa ↘️ -5.4 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 14.4 km/u (4.0 m/s), richting: ← 89°
• zaterdag 15 augustus: Min 24.0°C, Max 35.0°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1014.6 hPa ↘️ -2.0 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 17.6 km/u (4.9 m/s), richting: ↓ 339°
• zondag 16 augustus: Min 19.1°C, Max 27.9°C (Matige motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 1.8 mm, Kans op neerslag 20%, 🧭 1017.9 hPa ↗️ +3.3 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 19.8 km/u (5.5 m/s), richting: ↓ 14°
• maandag 17 augustus: Min 16.9°C, Max 22.3°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.3 mm, Kans op neerslag 7%, 🧭 1015.5 hPa ↘️ -2.4 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 15.0 km/u (4.2 m/s), richting: ↓ 345°
• dinsdag 18 augustus: Min 16.2°C, Max 24.3°C (Matige motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 2.1 mm, Kans op neerslag 18%, 🧭 1000.6 hPa ↘️ -14.9 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 8.8 km/u (2.4 m/s), richting: ↑ 198°
• woensdag 19 augustus: Min 15.8°C, Max 19.8°C (Zware motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 11.0 mm, Kans op neerslag 53%, 🧭 999.9 hPa ↘️ -0.7 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 20.5 km/u (5.7 m/s), richting: ↗ 238°

Details:
• 🌡️ Huidige temperatuur (om 01:15): 22.8°C (Helder)
• 🤚 Gevoelstemperatuur: 18.4°C (-4.4°C)
• 💨 Windsnelheid: 13.7 km/u (3.8 m/s), richting: ← 86°
• 🌬️ Windstoten: 25.9 km/h (7.2 m/s)
• 💧 Luchtvochtigheid: 31%
• 🧭 Luchtdruk: 1023.9 hPa ↘️ -0.6 hPa/3h
• 👁️ Zichtbaarheid: 43.4 km
• ☀️ UV-index: 0.0
• 🌅 Zonsopgang: 06:21 · 🌇 Zonsondergang: 21:12

Luchtkwaliteit:
• AQI: 41 🟢 (Goed)
• PM2.5: 7.1 μg/m³
• PM10: 12.2 μg/m³

Gegevens geleverd door Open-Meteo

#Rotterdam #Meteo #MeteoBot #MeteoNetherlands #OpenMeteo #FediMeteo

The CFTC has ordered Kalshi to keep operating in New York, claiming the state's lawsuit against the prediction market created a "market emergency." They said it acted "to ensure market stability" and "ordered the exchange to continue to operate in accordance with the Commodity Exchange Act's Core Principles." Ars Technica reports: The market emergency alleged by the CFTC is that New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Kalshi on July 31. James' lawsuit seeks a court order to permanently enjoin Kalshi "from operating an unlawful gambling business" in the state. The lawsuit also demands that Kalshi "make full restitution to customers who have engaged in betting" and pay financial penalties.

"New York intends to make event contract derivatives waste away under its iron curtain of state gaming laws before the courts get the chance to issue final rulings," CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said yesterday. "Congress did not intend for derivatives exchanges to be regulated under a patchwork of state gaming laws... New York has no business regulating these interstate financial markets. The commission is required by law to ensure order in these markets, and that is what we have done today." [...]

The CFTC says it alone has the power to regulate platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket under the Commodity Exchange Act, a US law that gives the CFTC exclusive jurisdiction over designated contract markets (DCMs). "These are financial exchanges that offer financial instruments and operate across state lines," Selig said yesterday. "They match the bid from a resident of one state with the offer of a resident from another state and submit the trade to a clearinghouse that backstops the transactions of customers throughout the country."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers at Israeli cybersecurity firm Dream say suspected China-linked hackers used an open-source AI-agent system to conduct what may be the first observed end-to-end autonomous cyberattack against a government. According to the Financial Times (paywalled), the attack compromised at least 85 accounts and resulted in the theft of more than 2,500 personnel records from Taiwanese systems. Tom's Hardware reports: The campaign reportedly ran for four days at the beginning of July and at times deployed as many as eight autonomous agents in parallel. Dream said the system mapped 21 government systems before compromising user accounts and extracting personnel information. The attackers subsequently expanded their activity to Taiwan's nuclear safety agency, at least seven energy companies, government suppliers, and other government systems.

Dream says it found the evidence inside a 160-megabyte (160MB) online archive that surfaced during its broader tracking of cyberthreat actors. The archive reportedly held 1,395 files showing that the tool was built on two open-source AI agent systems -- Hermes and OpenClaw -- both of which can be downloaded freely and are designed to let large language models carry out multi-step tasks on their own.

Researchers could not determine which underlying model powered the agents, but the data reportedly showed the model's safeguards had been sidestepped by presenting the intrusion as an authorized penetration test rather than a real attack. Of particular concern is that the toolkit for the hack comprised such easily available systems, neither of which was purpose-built for offense. The operators appear to have assembled a capable autonomous tool out of components any developer can pull down and run.

What the researchers describe as the tool's most striking feature was its ability to continuously devise attacks on its own, rather than follow a preprogrammed route. The platform continuously assessed available evidence, ranked possible attack paths, and reprioritized them as circumstances changed. When one technique failed, the tool tasked another agent with searching the internet for information and developing an alternative approach.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rent-a-GPU cloud Nebius plans to bring online over a gigawatt of datacenter capacity every year starting in 2027, but doing so will require playing the margins and juggling a mountain of debt. “Our future capacity pipeline effectively makes Nebius one of just a few companies in the world able to build more than a gigawatt of new capacity a year and we plan to do so in 2027,” CEO Arkady Volozh boasted on Wednesday’s earnings call. The endeavor won’t be cheap. In 2026, Nebius says it expects to burn between $20 billion and $25 billion on capital expenditures to bring between 800 and 1,000 MW worth of bit barn capacity online. A big chunk of that will be covered with customer prepayments — essentially deposits for future capacity. According to Nebius CFO Dado Alonso, the firm is on track to exceed $9 billion in customer prepayments this year. But this alone won’t be enough. So like most big rent-a-GPU rackets, including CoreWeave and Lambda, Nebius is taking on debt to finance its expansion. Specifically, the company is using its GPUs and contracted cash flows as collateral to secure favorable interest rates on the coveted accelerators. Nebius landed its first asset-backed debt facility valued at $775 million in July, and Alonso says the company will continue leaning on the financing scheme going forward. No surprise. Along with debt financing, the company is also exploring an asset-light model where “partners finance, build, and operate the facilities, whereas Nebius brings the full-stack platform and demand,” Volozh told analysts. In other words, Nebius gets to claim deployed capacity it didn’t have to front the cash for, but that relies on the company's ability to rent capacity for less than it can resell it for. While hitting a gigawatt of capacity a year won’t be cheap, Volozh is confident the investment will pay off in the long run. He claims that for every megawatt deployed, Nebius will bring in between $20 million and $25 million in revenues for medium-term leases, and $40 million to $50 million for short term leases up to six months. On the low end of the scale, that implies $20 billion a gigawatt, although Nebius Chief Product and Infrastructure Officer Andrey Korolenko notes that while the company expects to have up to a gigawatt of connected power by year’s end, not all of it will be active and generating revenue until 2027. “You have to commission the datacenter, build the network, build the clusters, deploy the platform, then onboard the customers, and then the revenue generation starts,” he said. “That takes a few months.” “In terms of our guidance from 800 megawatts to a gigawatt… I would think about that being active throughout the first half of 2027,” he added. But even if Nebius has to wait until 2027 to pull a full gigawatt of capacity, that still implies a massive uplift in revenue, which is forecast to hit $3 billion to $3.4 billion for fiscal year 2026. The past quarter accounted for just $582 million, which suggests Nebius will bring in more than $2 billion over the next two quarters if you believe its projections. There are a lot of faithful among the investor community, as its share price surged more than 30 percent on Wednesday following the report. While revenues are expected to increase dramatically over the next few quarters, it's easy to sell dollar bills for 70 cents apiece. Whether the company actually manages to turn a profit renting the shovels of the AI gold rush is another matter entirely. In Q2, the company posted an operating loss of $176 million, a jump from the $111 million operating loss it booked in the year-ago quarter. ®

Suspected Chinese cyber operatives used publicly available AI tools to compromise Taiwanese government systems before expanding the attack to its nuclear safety agency, supply-chain vendors, and at least seven energy companies in what security researchers called a "near-autonomous attack." Over the first four days of July, AI agents compromised 85 government user accounts and extracted more than 2,500 personnel records, according to Dream, an Israeli cybersecurity firm. Researchers uncovered evidence of the attack in a 160 MB online archive containing 1,395 files documenting the operation. Dream, in research published on Wednesday, detailed the intrusions and said that the suspected Chinese hackers hit “government entities in Asia” - but declined to say which government had been attacked. A person familiar with the attack confirmed to The Register that Taiwan was the target. The Financial Times first reported on Dream’s research and identified Taiwan. While the security firm doesn’t attribute the agentic attack to the Chinese government or a specific hacking group, the operational documentation “points to a Chinese-language operator,” the researchers said. According to Dream, the attack framework, built on open source Hermes and OpenClaw AI agents, deployed up to eight sub-agents, each assigned to its own targets and attack techniques, across 12 “attack waves” between July 1 and July 4. First, the agents mapped the entire government ecosystem, extracting embedded URLs, API endpoints, OAuth client IDs, and Keycloak configuration objects from a single government portal. This portal allowed the agents to identify 21 connected government systems and every supported authentication flow. “On one target alone, it discovered 36+ API endpoints spanning account management, user data retrieval, file upload, and administrative functions - many completely unauthenticated,” the Dream threat researchers wrote. “Critically, it found that one of the systems exposed its entire user database without any authentication - thousands of employee records including names, departments, and SSO account IDs.” Multiple entry points After mapping the government’s attack surface, the agents found multiple entry points including three hidden API endpoints that accepted any request body and returned a valid authenticated session without requiring user credentials. Using employee usernames harvested from an unauthenticated API, the agents broke into a government department’s office automation portal, solving its CAPTCHAs with 100 percent accuracy. The agents also tested predictable password patterns based on each employee’s ID, and cracked 85 accounts across multiple password-spray rounds. Eighty-four of the 85 cracked accounts successfully authenticated to the department's internal information system, giving the attackers access to internal dashboards, equipment management interfaces, and personnel statistics pages. In total, the illicit access allowed the agents to exfiltrate a ton of government information, including more than 2,564 personnel records, a full JSON export of all department system users, seven SSO client secrets, six internal database credentials across MSSQL, Oracle, and Sybase, and internal network IP ranges. But wait, there's more And then, the agents pivoted to the Taiwanese government’s supply chain. “It expanded the operation to government IT supply chain vendors, a nuclear safety agency, a government email system, and 7+ energy sector companies - scanning them all in parallel for misconfigurations, exposed admin interfaces, and exploitable vulnerabilities,” the researchers wrote. Notably, the attack framework implemented what the AI tools called “learning cycles.” These are autonomous sessions where the models search vulnerability databases, GitHub repositories, and other security research for specific techniques, CVEs, and common weaknesses to exploit in the targeted government's infrastructure. Additionally, when the AI framework made a mistake, it “self-corrected,” according to Dream, catching errors and fixing them through its own verification process. This near-autonomous attack comes as frontier model makers OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta all admitted that their agents went rogue, escaped from their training environments, and autonomously hacked other organizations and people. OpenAI technical staffer Michael Dalton, in a Black Hat briefing last week about the Hugging Face attack, said “AI orchestrated, fully automated offensive attacks are real now.” “In the near future, we should expect that threat actors will intentionally deploy, optimize, weaponize, and use offensive agent collectives in the manner that you have just described here,” he added. It appears that the future is now. ®

If this video doesn't make you LOL, you are dead inside. Forest bettongs aka woylies are some of the cutest endangered mammals native to forests and shrubland of Australia. Chariot pulled by cassowaries introduced us to them in a previous post, but they forgot the best part...

Wikipedia: "Another vernacular term applied to the woylie was "farting rat", inspired by the abrupt noise it emits when disturbed." If you can't love them because they're a bouncing, fart-sounding, mini-kangaroo-shaped potato, then love them because they're little engineers helping the environment. The Uleybury Wildlife Sanctuary is working to educate the public on the important part these animals play. These little legends might look cute, but they are absolute powerhouses for the environment. As they dig, forage and move leaf litter around, they help turn soil, spread fungi, improve habitat health and bring the forest floor back to life. The first link is a YT video, the last is a FB reel. Posted in the hope that they make you smile.

A meaningless tier to help me pay off that billboard In this YT short Tucker Bryant briefly explains his project. A 32-year-old former Google employee who describes himself as a conceptual artist and keynote speaker, Bryant is the one-man operation behind San Francisco's latest viral billboard, a 14- by 48-foot ad on the corner of Sixth and Folsom streets that reads "ChatTJB: The leading chat interface powered by AI." The twist: AI in this case stands for "Average Individual." TJB are just Bryant's initials. And the chatbot isn't powered by a large language model but by Bryant's weary brain and tired fingers. Source The San Francisco Standard

Here a link to his previous art projects How he describes his work as a Poet/Artist: I break patterns on purpose so better outcomes can emerge. I learned how to do that during a decade in Silicon Valley—studying at Stanford University and working at Google—where innovation is less about inspiration and more about structure. You test assumptions. You design constraints. You build before certainty arrives. At the same time, I started applying that mindset to an old form of art that I loved, but that lots of people feel like they don't "get." Instead of treating poetry as words on a page that captivate bookworms but leaves lots of others scratching their heads, I wanted to treat it as an experience to be designed. Timing, environment, interactivity, friction—the medium became what I obsessed over innovating on. Source Tucker Bryant About

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Gepensioneerden van de grote pensioenfondsen die al zijn overgestapt naar het nieuwe pensioenstelsel, kunnen volgend jaar mogelijk een bescheiden pensioenverhoging tegemoetzien. Dankzij positieve rendementen hebben Pensioenfonds Zorg en Welzijn (PFZW), Pensioenfonds Metaal en Techniek (PMT) en bpfBOUW hun financiële situatie in het tweede kwartaal duidelijk verbeterd.

Volgens voorlopige inschattingen van PFZW en bpfBOUW kunnen de uitkeringen straks met ongeveer 0,6 procent worden verhoogd. Metaalfonds PMT gaat op basis van de financiële situatie per eind juni uit van een plus van 0,5 procent. Het gaat wel om een indicatie of momentopname. De daadwerkelijke gevolgen voor pensioenuitkeringen in 2027 worden pas bepaald op basis van de cijfers per eind september.

In het eerste kwartaal ondervonden de fondsen nog fikse hinder van de oorlog in het Midden-Oosten en een gedaalde rente. De pensioenopbouw van bij elkaar miljoenen deelnemers liep hierdoor schade op. In het tweede kwartaal ging het financieel beduidend beter met de fondsen.

Recordstanden aandelenmarkten

Dat is vooral te danken aan recente recordstanden op de aandelenmarkten, mede door het grote enthousiasme bij beleggers over kunstmatige intelligentie. Techbedrijven en chipfondsen zijn daardoor flink in waarde gestegen. Ook is de onrust op de beurzen over de oorlog in het Midden-Oosten wat afgenomen.

"De beleggingsresultaten over dit kwartaal zijn positief, waarbij met name de aandelenrendementen er positief uitspringen", zegt Caspar Vlaar, voorzitter namens de werknemers en pensioengerechtigden bij PMT. "Daarmee is het negatieve effect uit het eerste kwartaal voor de meeste deelnemers grotendeels ingehaald. De verschillen tussen het eerste en tweede kwartaal laten goed zien dat deze resultaten momentopnames zijn."

Buffer

Door de overgang naar het nieuwe pensioenstelsel gingen de pensioenen bij de drie grote fondsen begin dit jaar nog fors omhoog. Dat kwam omdat toen een deel van de buffer werd verdeeld. Zo'n grote verhoging lijkt er volgend jaar hoe dan ook niet in te zitten.

Van de grote fondsen zijn ambtenaren- en onderwijzerspensioenfonds ABP en metalektrofonds PME nog niet over naar het nieuwe stelsel. Zij kwamen vorige maand al met hun kwartaalberichten. ABP hintte erop dat deelnemers van het grootste pensioenfonds van Nederland straks mogelijk een extra pensioenverhoging kunnen verwachten. ABP gaat komende jaarwisseling over naar het nieuwe stelsel.